How much you enjoy I Melt With You is completely dependent on how you react to the complete left-turn the movie takes halfway through, and also that you don’t expect, as some of the marketing (particularly what came out of the US) has suggested, that this is kind of like a mid-life crisis The Hangover. It most certainly isn’t.

Every year four men meet for a week of drug fuelled debauchery away from their staid normal lives and family. For those few days they can retreat to their youth and its carefree pursuit of fun and the fact everything back in those days was felt far more keenly, before being numbed by the real world. Richard (Thomas Jane), Ron (Jeremy Piven), Jonathan (Rob Lowe) and Tim (Christian McKay) certainly go all out for drink, drugs, sex and general mania, but on day 4, things go horribly wrong when one of them kills themselves. This sets off an ever descending journey for the remaining mates, all based around a note they wrote 25 years before, during their final year of college. [Read more...]

Set in the Mission District of San Francisco, Che (Benjamin Bratt) is the hard-assed, ex-con father of Jessie (Jeremy Ray Valdez). The teen hasn’t had the easiest of lives, but has found some measure of happiness with his boyfriend, Jordan (Max Rosenak). Jessie keeps the relationship a secret, but when Che finds some Polaroids snapped at a gay bar, the truth is out. Che is less than happy having a ‘faggot’ for a son, and is utterly unwilling to try and understand it. The best they can do is come to an uneasy silence over the subject.

As Jessie nears graduation and the Mission’s homophobia builds to potentially lethal levels, Che remains unable to accept his son. Although it seems the wedge between them is immovable, can father and son ever come back together? And can Che fins his own redemption in a relationship with Smoke, who almost acts as his conscience? [Read more...]